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Terminated Globe exec sues because he got no severance pay

Former Boston Globe Chief Operating Officer Sean Keohan is suing the Globe and owner John Henry over the way he was terminated in 2017, saying he was denied a severance package he should have gotten.

In his suit, filed yesterday in US District Court, Keohan said he is owed benefits under a Globe severance plan for employees "who suffer a loss of employment," which he says he obviously did on Sept. 12, 2017, when "the Globe’s President and Chief Financial Officer, Vinay Mehra, informed Keohan that his Globe email was being shut-down immediately, and he was instructed to promptly leave the premises."

Keohan, who started at the Globe in 1985, alleges that the CFO of John Henry's parent company told him Henry just didn't want to pay him severance, and then followed up with a formal letter in which he claimed the Globe had ended its severance plan in 2014. Keohan, who was making $245,000 a year at the time of his firing, charges that was a lie:

Globe employees had, in fact, been provided severance benefits under the Plan in the years following October 21, 2014, including without limitation, Chief Financial Officer James Levy, advertising executive Jason Kissell, Controller Karen Bray, and Editorial Page Editor Peter Canellos.

Pablo Sandoval is from Venezuela, and we at the Globe and the City need to do everything we can to help the immigrant class that has made Boston the City it is today and support local food trucks and dietary intake stations.

Keohan on the other hand is from the entitled white men group that has been getting their way and holding women back for time immemorial. #changeiscoming Now he is just sniveling like my ex boyfriends who couldn't muster the proper wherewithal to get to where Daddy is. You won't see Shirley Leuong wailing and whining like this when she gets let go.

He was a local guy who started out as a security guard in 1985, worked full time while going to school, and eventually worked his way up the ladder. He should get paid. However, another part of me thinks that because he became management's pit bull he had lived by the sword and his day inevitably came, so screw him.

That's the crux of the issue. If he was due a severance, he was due a severance. He cites others who got severance pay when they were let go. In fact, it would make no sense to have a contract that gave a severance for a voluntary separation. You see severance a lot in sports, where a coach has a rider in his or her contract that notes what happens when they get shitcanned for not winning. It's usually a cash settlement that is less that the promised salary. I'd bet my bottom dollar that Mike Barnacle got a severance after what he did.

It is rather obvious that you really do not understand employment agreements or contracts. I don't wish to be antagonistic with you but your assertions suggest that you are simply making up stuff about severance and the terms of when or how it is paid. Just saying.

But look at my example of sports coaches. Let's say the Brad Stevens gets canned by the Celtics 2 weeks from now. His contract, were it done right, will have stipulations on payouts in the event of termination. Probably not the full value of the contract for the remainder of his contract, but some money still, with a stipulation that were he to get a job with another team the payments would stop. We've seen it with contracts at UMass-Amherst, which is easy to track down since they are public record.

The reality is that if this guy just up and decided to leave, he'd be in breach of his contract, so the Globe would owe him nothing. If he were fired, it would be another creature altogether. I could not wrap my head around the idea that the poster to whom I responded has that a severance would only apply if the separation was employee initiated. That's not how these things go at all. What the contract says is the crux of the matter. And none of us has seen the language.